Aimia wins Lord Mayor's Dragon Award

The organisation won in the Future Proofing Charities Award category for its ‘Data Philanthropy’ programme. The scheme saw Aimia’s staff use their analytic skills to help charities across London understand their impact and improve their services.

In the past two years the company has supported more than 40 charities and donated more than 15,000 hours of pro bono analytic support, creating a sustainable solution to the sector’s critical lack of knowledge and expertise. The operator of the well-known Nectar loyalty programme has worked with youth charities including Centrepoint and Place2Be, and helped charities unlock over £2m in funding.

By understanding the data they collect, charities have been able to improve efficiency, make cost savings and redirect resource to improve frontline services.

Winners of the Lord Mayor’s Dragon Awards were announced at a Mansion House ceremony. The Awards, now in its 28th year, is among the most established and distinguished Corporate Responsibility Awards in the UK.

Olivia Curno from Place2Be said the charity had benefited from Aimia’s winning Data Philanthropy initiative. She said: “We had a huge amount of data stretching back 20 years. Aimia were able to assess all that the data, pick out interesting themes and trends, and help us understand fully the impact we have on the children we support.”

Initially launched in the UK, Data Philanthropy has expanded with programmes now in Canada, the US and Australia.

The Lord Mayor Alan Yarrow, who presented the awards, added: “I could not be more proud to champion the participants and winners of the 2015 Lord Mayor’s Dragon Awards. Their innovative contribution to our communities shows the immense value of CSR. In fact, we could not do without it. Today’s Dragon Award winners such as Aimia, are continuing this work with a broad range of initiatives – enabling business employees to use their skills to maximise the impact of the voluntary sector, and help 300,000 Londoners directly. Whether serving as mentors for school children, or accountants for charities – they are a fantastic example of corporate community engagement, and helping to build a fairer and more prosperous society.”

This year, the applicants for the Lord Mayor’s Dragon Awards volunteered around 92,000 hours, helped around 300,000 people in London and created 5,000 training placements as a result of their community engagement.